10 Ways To Get Content For Your Blog

Jayson DeMers
, ContributorI demystify SEO and online marketing for business owners.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Content marketing demands a lot of attention. You need to pay attention to the latest popular trends, analyze your competitors’ strategies, and come up with new, original ideas on a constant basis so you can post regularly and build an audience that expects—and desires—your consistent material. For some content marketers, the obstacle is in the core strategy; questions like “who is my key audience?” or “what mediums do I need to be using?” But for most content marketers, the biggest problem is creating enough high-quality, engaging material to keep the engine of your content strategy running.

If you’re having trouble keeping up a consistent flow of content, try one of these unique strategies to create a higher volume of the same high-quality material your audience has come to expect:

1. Break up your posts. This isn’t about “creating more content” as much as it is about using the content you already have more efficiently. If you’re a fan of writing longer posts, try breaking those posts up into smaller, more niche titles. It will give you more opportunities to post without watering down your content. If you’re already writing short posts, this strategy can still work for you—take your idea for the post and transform it into different permutations. For example, if you write an article about top breakfast foods for young children, write a follow-up about top lunch foods for young children.

2. Experiment with newsjacking. Newsjacking has become a bit of a buzzword, but it’s a viable and easy strategy that anyone can use. Essentially, newsjacking involves finding a relevant trending topic and repurposing it for your own blog. It will take a bit of effort to find the right news story that fits your niche or industry, and some more effort to brainstorm and write a good spin on it, but it can work wonders.

3. Outsource your content creation: internally. Another way to get more content flowing is to rely on your coworkers for a little bit of help. This is especially useful if you work for a large company with multiple departments. Ask around to see who might be interested in writing up a sample blog about their own responsibilities within the company—for example, in a manufacturing company, a niche technician would be able to write a highly detailed post about the pitfalls of certain types of equipment. This way, you can leverage the power of your existing staff to create more—and more unique—content.

4. Outsource your content creation: externally. Another option is to rely on an external source of content creation, usually in the form of a freelance writer. Try not to rely on content mills or services that connect you to a wide pool of authors. Instead, find a freelancer who can learn to write consistently in your company’s brand voice.

5. Outsource your content creation: use your audience. If you’re looking for a free, yet somewhat less reliable way to create more content, try leveraging the power of your audience. Initiate a competition or simply call your readers to action by asking them to submit pieces of their own content. You can invite them to write or record a review on one of your products, find a new and inventive way to position one of your products, or just ask them to write about anything they want (as long as it has something to do with the company). Take the best of these responses, and post them gradually. This will serve as an excellent means of content production, and will also increase the loyalty of the customers whose content you shared.

6. Don’t be afraid to share. Speaking of sharing content, don’t be afraid to do it. The best content strategies are the ones with mostly original content, true, but the key word there is “mostly.” If you see a cool infographic or an exciting video relevant to your industry, feel free to post it on your site (along with proper attribution, of course). Your readers will probably like it just as much as you did when you saw it, and you can share the credibility with the original source without having any stake in its original creation.